The OOOOOnly Way to Fly?

Next month, new regulations from the Transportation Security Administration go into effect, allowing those of you who insist on traveling with such things as Swiss Army knives, hockey sticks, golf clubs, ski poles, lacrosse sticks and baseball bats to take them on an airplane with you. The changes have sparked something of an uproar from flight attendants, who are worried about being exposed to dangerous implements.

Before 9/11, people used to travel with unbelievable amounts of junk, which made it difficult to find a place to mash your carry-on bag in the overhead compartments. In spite of all this, I don’t recall there being regular knife fights or batting practice on airliners, so exactly what the difference would be  now, I don’t know. Are airline passengers angrier and more aggressive? I could actually understand that, inasmuch as we will still not be able to take water bottles on board and will still have to take our shoes off in security. Have all these rules kept us safe? Have they made us feel safer? Perhaps they did at the beginning; now, I’m not so sure. The whole experience is demeaning, but we put up with it because flying gets us there faster, unless it snows, gets foggy, there’s a computer glitch, an airport security breach or some other issue. As for aggressive passengers, if they stopped serving alcohol in coach, would that calm folks down, or make them worse?

A friend of mine is moving to a new state, and has decided to travel there by RV with her three cats. She figures she can’t take the cats to most hotels. Inasmuch as she has the time for the trip, she may have the right idea. Though I wouldn’t relish the idea of traveling and sleeping in a confined space with three cats (or even one, for that matter), these RVs have refrigerators, microwaves, beds, toilets, even showers. None of the humiliation associated with an airport, or even the inconvenience of packing and unpacking bags and checking into hotels of various cleanliness levels. You don’t even have to be subject to restaurant food in strange towns not in the Michelin guide. I just hope I never get stuck behind her vehicle while traveling through a scenic national park, or I might start behaving like one of these aggressive airline passengers.

When I traveled to Israel by air many years ago, the El Al security people were tough. They didn’t rely on all these rote motions and machines. The trained agents looked you right in the eye and asked you a bunch of questions, carefully gauging your reactions. If anyone was going to catch a terrorist, it was going to be them.

Maybe we’d all feel better if the TSA were able to tell us how many terrorist incidents they’ve actually stopped, thanks to all the pain involved in boarding an airplane. Oh well, there are lot worse forms of transportation.

Do we have a vote for cruise ships?

The More, the Merrier

I'm talking about brain cells. President-elect Obama has announced his national security team, and there are more than a few such cells to rub together. That’s refreshing.

That’s not to put down everyone that’s on the Bush team, but you can’t accuse Obama of filling positions with old cronies. If you do, well, he has a better class of cronies.

Maybe it’s just that he realizes there are people out there with more experience than he has and he needs their help – his challenge will be to make sure these folks know that he is the decider, to borrow an expression, but he is reassuring us that he’s aware of that. 

It doesn’t bother me at all that I don’t feel like I could have a beer with any of these people, much less the President-elect. There are plenty of people I could have a beer with, and maybe some of them could run the country -- but beer-sharing is not a qualification for high office, as far as I’m concerned. 

John F. Kennedy had to digest a lot of conflicting opinions as he was deciding how to handle the Cuban missile crisis, and even then, he was taking what most historians now consider a terrible risk, which worked out in his favor.  When he took office, he didn’t have all that much more experience than Obama.

Because of what didn’t happen with the Russians and what later happened to President Kennedy, many have elevated him to near sainthood. Obama’s name is often mentioned in the same sentence, or at least the same paragraph, as is the case here. While Kennedy was President, he was a mere mortal, as is Obama. I don’t think Obama is going to be able to walk on water, but I’ll be OK with it if he walks on the rocks for a while.

There, now I've said it.